Monday, September 20, 2010

I am nominating my friend Kathy who blogs over at Play, Eat, Learn, Live. For her daughter's 7th birthday, she organised a science-themed birthday party, including science experiment party games and pass the parcel with science themed prizes. The piece de resistance was the 'birthday cake' which took the form of cupcakes in the design of the periodic table. Once I heard her plans, I volunteered to help and we spent an evening icing 118 cupcakes with the correct chemical symbols. It's fair to say that until I began to ice 118 cupcakes, I did not fully comprehend how many cupcakes there were! Kathy has blogged about our experience in icing the cupcakes here:

Oh, I do commiserate. The periodic table is a huge undertaking.

So Kathy explains her plan here in her first of two posts:

The theme is Science, as my girl is greatly enamored of science & maths and dearly wanted a party that reflected her interests.

For her cake, we discussed a number of options. We thought about a dinosaur cake, she considered a solar system cake, and briefly toyed with the idea of a test tube cake. In the end, however, she decided, she wanted a cake based on ...

the periodic table of elements.

All 118 of them.

I'll wait a bit while you absorb that.

They look fantastic!

Check out the full post on the birthday party cupcakes and all the science-themed activities here and here at Play, Eat, Learn, Live.

Arley of Young and Hip wrote me telling me about two hip related baking projects she had worked on. The first was a cake:

For that reason, I decided to throw my hip a going away party to celebrate all it had done for me over the years. (The tag line on the invites was: "My hip and I are going to Canada: only one of us is coming back.") All my friends came out to bid my hip farewell, drink, and sample the cake I made in the shape of a hip X-ray. Cake decorating is a hobby of mine (anything that involves sugar and butter in vast quantities is a hobby of mine...plus, what other hobby allows you to craft chest hair out of tootsie rolls?), so I was happy to have an outlet for my particular brand of crazy.

Those of you who know anything about avascular necrosis or hips will note that a) that hip does not have avascular necrosis and b) the pelvis belongs to a man. Details, details.

The cake is AMAZING. I only wish I had larger photos of it to share.

However I do have nice high-res photos of the cookies she made of the same theme.

The hip replacement didn't end up going so well so I wound up having to have a second surgery. Because I had to see my new surgeon the day before Christmas, I decided to make him little hip X-ray cookies to wish him a Merry Christmas. He was completely, utterly and totally unimpressed, but at least his secretary (who wields much of the power anyhow, I suspect) liked them.

Unimpressed? Do all of his patients bring him super-cool hip x-ray cookies? Do they serve congenital dysphasia of the hip muffins in the cafeteria?

Well I think they're great. For Arley's full blog posts on the cookies and cake click here and here.
Dikla sent me some cupcakes she baked, decorated with diagrams designed by my favorite bongo playing scientist. That's right, Feynman diagram cupcakes.

You've got my binary cupcakes beat for sure.
Adding to the wealth of brain cakes and cupcakes on the blog, Alania of Something Magic sends me her brain tiramisu.

The first picture is of a brain tiramisu that I made for my co-workers. There's this recurring zombie theme around our office and back several months ago I showed a couple of them the brain ganache cupcakes, but I never got as far as actually making them. Then, a week or so ago, we pranked my manager while he was on vacation by making it look as if zombies had attacked his part of the cubicle. Since it was also his birthday and he is a total coffee addict, I decided to be nice and so came into existence the brain tiramisu.

The other pictures are from back in May. I wanted to give royal icing a try and we were sending my little brother a tackle box for his birthday, so I made up this batch of fish cookies which my mom came over and helped me frost. It wasn't until one of my co-workers saw a picture that we realized that one of the cookies was actually pretty close to the Twitter Fail Whale. The cookies did survive their shipment from Michigan to Wyoming where they were devoured by a larger predator.

Laurel sent me another one of those baked goods that biologists either absolutely love or cringe at thought, a streak plate cake! Mmmm isolated colonies, nom.

My husband and I have been following your blog since last fall when a friend showed us the first batch of science cookies. As former Seattle foodies (my husband got his phd at UW) and total science geeks, we were hooked. We made dozens of gels, plates and mice for the department Christmas party and some atoms with circling electrons for family valentines. A few weeks ago, I saw your call for an agar plate cake, just at the time I was thinking of ideas for dessert for a barbecue. So here is our colony cake, well received by the budding geneticists and molecular biologists of Washington University. The buttercream frosting didn't work as well as royal icing for decorating, but it certainly tasted good.

I disagree! Your streaking technique appears much better than mine. I just throw sprinkles at my cookies. Fantastic cake. Sierra sent me these human organ cookies that are almost too pretty to eat:

I think your science cookies are just so creative, I knew I had to get in on that! My best friend is in med school at Tulane and I wanted to send her a care package, so I made the human organ cookies that I've attached a picture of. I looked everywhere for anatomy cookie cutters and couldn't find any, so I had to cut the organs out by hand. Definitely a lot of work, but so much fun and so worth it in the end. I'd still love to find body part cookie cutters if they exist, so if you have any suggestions about where to look, I'd be most grateful! Thanks again for your wonderful posts and inspiration!

I love these cookies! Last year I wanted to do anatomically correct heart cookies for valentines day but you're right, those cutters are hard to find. There are heart cutters out there but they're hand made and fairly expensive. I have a vague memory of a $50 copper cutter of an anatomical heart sold in Oregon. You know, we should just lobby Sherry of Sciencecookiecutters.com to make the set.

Marie of Frk. Overballe sent me this fantastic chemistry-inspired cake.

I am studying chemistry, and my fellow students and I regularly arrange "cake events". So, I felt very nerdy (not an uncommon feeling, for a person who has two posters of the periodic table and a watch where the numbers are replaced with elements) and made a benzene cake. That however, was not nerdy enough, I had to make TWO benzene cakes, to show each resonance structure.

I've been waiting for a cake of this kind. Fantastic, more chemistry cakes please!
Last but not least are Julie's adorable Telescope Cupcakes!

Upon the realization that there were several telescopes, the decision to make observatories out of them was swift.

If I missed anyone (the blog's email box is roughly 99% spam, it happens), email me at notsohumblepieblog@gmail.com.

If you would like to be in the next round up, shoot me an email with links or photos of your science-themed edible goodies. Including "Science Cookies" or "Science Roundup" in the subject line helps ensure I don't miss you.

oh, yes, please poke the cookie cutter lady to make anatomically-correct (or even anatomically-close-ish) cookie cutters! i'm a first year medical student and i promise that in my class alone you'd get dozens of orders. =)